These Steel Cables
by Darkness' Embrace
Summary: The story of a girl with marks on her silk-paper skin and a boy with hatred on his heart. And ultimately, how they save each other in every way but the one that matters. Told in three parts.
1. PART I

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series. All rights belong to J.K. Rowling.**

******Warnings: This work of fiction contains references to the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of a minor by an adult and spousal violence, in addition to the participation of a minor in an illegal cage fighting ring.**

**These Steel Cables**

They met in a place that neither had ever thought they would be; a place so deep in the undergrowth that he could taste the soil in his mouth, and she could feel the maggots burrowing under her skin. A place they would look back on in the years to come and shake their heads, wondering how people can go so wrong, how they can spin off the tracks until they're using and being used and next thing they know they're tossed away like garbage.

It was on a normal, hateful day, the night of the full moon, that they met. She was safely sequestered in her little place, the hole she retired to when she had been used sufficiently for the night. She was comfortable with it now, being garbage. He, on the other hand, was brilliant and virile and not at all the coward she was. Yet they found themselves in the same position, time and time again.

So really, how different could they be?

The password to the prefect's bathroom made it's way around the school all too quickly. In fact, that was one of the things Rose hated most about Hogwarts. Despite being beautiful and green and chock full of magic, only the secrets that shouldn't be kept, remained just that – secrets.

She tried to stay away from any public places when she was like this, and the small, sixth floor prefect's bathroom had turned out to be, surprisingly, the least used room in the entire school. What was one more bathroom? Besides, it was very instrategically placed – one had to be willing to pace around redundantly in order to locate the entrance. In the three years she'd been frequenting this little hideout, Rose had never seen anybody but herself use it.

It was because of the long, trusting relationship that she shared with this particular prefect's bathroom that Rose did not hesitate to barrel through the door as fast as she could with the aching thighs, cracked ribs, and bloody, swollen lips that were the unwanted gifts bestowed upon her that evening. The tears came hot and fast now, swimming across her pores and burrowing themselves into the creases of her lips and nose. The salt burned her skin.

She paused in front of the mirror, staring at what she had become. 5'4'' with red-brown hair and pale hazel eyes was how a kind person would describe her, she supposed. But Rose was only kind when people deserved it, and the girl staring back at her deserved none of that tenuous courtesy. Palish skin with an unattractive yellow cast, set in soft creases around deep-set eyes and a small, flat nose. Everyone always said she had her mother's nose, but as Rose studied it very carefully, she decided that such an assessment was nothing but an affront to her mother.

She didn't bother to catalogue the bruising that ran along her cheekbones, the bloody nose, nor the busted lip. She hardly noticed them anymore.

Rose looked down, taking a deep breath and wincing at the painful twinge that accompanied it. She grabbed the muggle first-aid kit she had left under the sink, unzipping it to study the small, clear-plastic sections. _Tape first, I think_. All of this was second nature to her, as it had been for a long, long time. _Figure-eight around the ankle, and just enough to hold the ribs in place. _At this point, the ritual was almost comforting.

Something made her look up suddenly, and what she saw made the tape she was holding clatter to the floor.

There was a face reflected in the mirror beside hers, one that was at the same time both very different and much the same. Busted lip, black eye. But where she was used to seeing scarlet and coffee reflected back at her, there was white blonde hair and cobalt eyes set into harsh, chiseled features that possessed a fierceness she could only dream of. His face floated before her eyes, and in that moment, she could not for the life of her decide whether or not he was a dream. He had to be, she thought. This train of deliberate dissolution continued until Rose felt the fallen first-aid tape placed gently in her left hand, as if by some mystical force. She looked up, something shocked and horrified and just a little bit _awed_ showing plainly in her eyes.

He didn't speak. He just sighed; long and deep and inexpressibly sad. With that, he turned around and left, nothing left in his wake but a frightened, beaten girl, some first-aid tape, and a few drops of _purest_ red blood.

**~ () ~**

Rose had Defence Against the Dark Arts last period, just as she'd had since second year. She can still remember what it felt like, the first time she realized that as soon as she stepped into that classroom, her free will was gone. Cold toes pressed firmly to the floor inside her blue mary janes, fingers gripped around the edge of her desk, unable to move no matter how much she willed it.

Professor Tinstine was over forty with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a thin, long face. He was jovial and handsome in that distinguished way that only came with a certain number of wrinkles, and for the first few weeks after his arrival at the beginning of her third year, Rose just may have harboured a small crush on him.

When she really ruminated on it, that fact was what made it all the more painful, the first time he cast what she later realized was the infamous _Iniuria Curse_ on her, locked the classroom door, and did things to her that no man should do to any girl. The first time it happened, she was scared and confused, until it happened again, and she realized deep down in her heart of hearts, that there was nothing she could do to stop it. Ever. She was bound to him now – magically, physically, and emotionally; in every way that mattered.

So Rose Weasley did what she had done for her entire life. She closed her eyes and endured, making all the necessary motions and trying not to be noticed. It worked, she supposed. On one hand, she was happy that no one knew her dirty little secret. On the other hand, though, the one that was small and twisted and confused, she wondered at how nobody, not even her family, noticed the little scar that now existed on the back of her right knee, or her perpetually swollen lips and highly-coloured cheeks. Eventually, she stopped trying, noticing, or particularly caring. At least that's what she told herself.

And yet, she still managed to find herself staring in the mirror in that deserted prefect's bathroom, tears and dried blood mixing on her cheeks.

**~ () ~**

The next time Rose had occasion to visit the prefect's bathroom was three days later. The Professor had kept her late. She was confused as she climbed the stairs towards the sixth floor, her mind racing. Although Rose had some bruising on her neck, arms and thighs, today she had no other major injuries. In fact, he had been downright gentle. He had held her and kissed her and acted like he loved her, as he hurt her in the deepest places she knew. And to Rose, that was worse than all the pain she had ever experienced at his hands, this strange, cloying gentleness. It made her feel like a guilty party to his crime, and she realized as she pushed open the door that this had never been just his crime. It was hers too; it had been ever since that second day, and would be until the day she died.

For some reason, when she entered the bathroom and saw Scorpius Malfoy hunched over the main sink, taking great, heaving breaths, the only surprise she felt was a dull pang in her stomach. She realized, with some detachment as she stared at his broad back, that he was attempting to bandage what appeared to be a nasty puncture wound in his side. She stood there in the light of the doorway, her mind in overdrive, trying to wrap her head around the oddness of this situation.

Scorpius looked up sharply, his dark eyes pressing into her temples. "Get over here and help me, won't you?" He tugged sharply on the bandage, his tone gruff and frustrated.

"Oh, sorry. Of course. Sorry," Rose mumbled, scurrying over to his side, her hands fluttering uselessly. "Do you need me to wrap it, or press down, or just -,"

"Just wrap the bloody thing, alright? I don't need to be bleeding all over the sodding prefect's bathroom," he said, frustration and pain mixing in his throat to form words that frightened Rose to her core.

She didn't respond. Focusing on the task at hand, she pressed the adhesive firmly into his luminescent skin. Scopius hissed in pain, jerking away from her touch.

"I'm so sorry!" Rose cried, pulling back abruptly.

After a few seconds, she hesitantly pressed the bandage back to his wound, noting with some detached form of fascination how fluidly the scarlet liquid soaked into the absorbent bandage.

"Just finish it," he forced out, his words distorted by his clenched jaw.

She bit the inside of her cheek as she felt his stomach muscles tense under her fingers. "There. Done," She hiccupped, wiping the wetness from her cheeks.

Scorpius straightened, and she took the opportunity to study his face, the ridges and hollows painted in a mixture of cloud white and sickly purple. Looking back in the mirror, she shakily lifted a hand to her cheek, pressing it against the bruise that matched Scorpius'. Abruptly, she reached under the sink for her stash of first aid.

Before she could inhale, a pale, long-fingered hand was wrapped like a vice around her wrist. "What are you doing?" he heaved, his voice twitching in his throat.

Rose felt herself freeze up, her blood congealing in her veins. She could see the blue vein throbbing in Scorpius' forehead, his eyes wide and panicked with something more than just simple alarm. Paranoia creased every line of his face.

Rose took a deep, shuddering breath, her face feeling seized up and stiff, fear locking her joints in place. "I – I'm just getting some bruise salve," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

She stared down at her wrist gripped in his hand, and noted how pathetic it appeared, small, limp, and unresisting despite it all. A salty tear landed on the back of his hand, and he released her as if he had been burned.

That was how Rose Weasley found herself standing beside Scorpius Malfoy in a dusty, deserted prefect's bathroom on a cold night in December. She realized as she patted the bruise relief cream to her face, that this was the first time in almost five years that anybody had seen her without a full body glamour wrapped around her like an invisible cocoon, lilting lightly between what she really was and what she wanted people to see. The best lies contained a sliver of the truth, after all.

"So," Rose began, her voice cracked with disuse, "why are you here, then, Malfoy?" She continued to apply the bruise cream, trying to maintain some sort of balance between foolhardiness and simply inquiry.

Scorpius brought his hand down onto the concrete countertop with enough force to shake a couple of latent drops of water from the turned-off faucet. Rose jumped.

"Shut up, Weasley. I'm not standing here because I want to hang out with you. I'm here because there is nowhere else to go. So do us both a favour, and just shut up," He bit the words out harshly, desperately, in a voice like steel.

"Right. Of course. Sorry, I just thought that, well –,"

He ran his hand through his hair, mussing the normally slicked back strands. "Don't. Don't think. We're obviously both here because of something that we can't talk about, or don't want to talk about. So just give it a rest," He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. "Good night, Weasley."

He left the bathroom, shutting the door behind him, and the room suddenly became bigger and colder and much less comforting. Rose stared at herself in the mirror, feeling her face scrunch unattractively as she covered her mouth with her hand.

_Maybe I want to talk about it, Malfoy. Maybe I need to. _ She stared hard at her reflection, knowing full well that the only person who could hear her words was the ugly, sobbing girl in the mirror.

**~ () ~**

"I know, Hugo, it's Christmastime. But I just… I have some things to finish up here, okay? Mum will understand," Rose fought the urge to cry as she said goodbye to her little brother. It seemed like that was all she did these days.

He sighed, looking far more grown up than she had imagined he ever would. When had this happened? "Yeah, I get it," he acceded, adjusting the strap of his book bag as he got up and turned around.

"Wait, what about my hug goodbye?" She waited, but Hugo didn't come any closer. He appeared nervous as he ran his hand over his face, looking like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"You're never around anymore, Rose. You've changed, so much so that sometimes I look at you and don't even realize that you're there. Where did my sister go?" His voice cracked on the last syllable.

Rose wanted to say something, to have the power to weave a blanket of words in the air that she could place around his shoulders, if not just for Hugo, then for herself as well. But she found herself at a loss. He lingered for a moment, his warm, cinnamon-coloured eyes scorching her where she stood, until he turned away abruptly, his steps long and jerky as he walked away.

She wanted to follow him, to scream that she loved him and missed him and wished she could come home and be with her family like she had been before. But she knew, as she stood there watching the boy that was now bigger than her leave the castle, that she would never be able to go home and live safely ensconced within her family the way she had. They were to be her home, her refuge; the place she went to feel loved and happy and _safe_, something she hadn't felt in three long years, and would probably never feel again.

_Rose. Rose. Rose. _

She closed her eyes as a spasm exploded through her body. She locked her muscles in place, her nails digging into the palms of her hands as she concentrated.

_Rose. Rose. Rose._

Her feet moved of their own accord, one in front of the other. He was calling. So just like every other time, she forced herself to resist, knowing as she did it that it would do no good. It never did. She felt like a roller-coaster car at one of those muggle carnivals that her mother used to take her to – attached to a rail that forced her through the same pattern over and over again until she was rusted through and broken down. So rickety that everybody stayed away. Stumbling as her feet were forced down the hallway, Rose Weasley cried.

When she reached the Professor's office door, Rose felt her fist drawn up to the door of its own accord, smashing down in a painful knock. He always made her knock. The door creaked open, but Rose didn't look up. She studied the ground affixed to her feet, staring in awe at the grey shadow that filled the blank concrete beneath them. He was so tall, so large, so all-encompassing.

_So frightening. _

As usual, no words passed between them. First came the hands, then the lips, followed by the hips, and then the fists. Always in that order. Rose liked the way it was organized – it gave her something to focus on while her hair was splayed around her head and her spine hurt from the hardness of the concrete. That was one good thing about being cursed, she supposed. There was never any thought, no resistance except for that initial burst of adrenaline that was squeezed out of her veins each time he called. She had learned long ago that it would do no good. In the end, there was really just the rhythm, the pain, and the salty, fearful regret.

When it was over, she would stand up, grimacing inside as those invisible, darkly magical fingers forced up the corners of her lips into a bestial smile that was somehow meant to convey happiness. Complicity. Rose turned around and shuffled out of the room, trying vainly to ignore the hand prints on her neck and the blood on her thighs, focusing instead on the way Scorpius Malfoy looked when she entered the bathroom, his indigo eyes wide and unseeing, the weight of his scars and hers bringing him to his knees.

**END PART I**


	2. PART II

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series. All rights belong to J.K. Rowling.**

**Warnings: This work of fiction contains references to the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of a minor by an adult and spousal violence, in addition to the participation of a minor in an illegal cage fighting ring.**

**These Steel Cables (II)**

The door creaked open, and it struck her that it was a sad, sad world they lived in when two seemingly normal, happy teenagers would spend Christmas Eve in sitting on the floor in a dirty sixth floor school bathroom, simply because they had nowhere else to go where they could feel safe. That safety should be found in a twelve by twelve room with water stains and cracked tiles was even sadder.

"Merlin, Weasley. In here again? Do you live in here or something?" Malfoy asked, shuffling through the door and shutting it closed behind him. He looked like an old man.

"You know, Malfoy, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. You're in here near as much as I am," Rose pointed out in a voice like steel, when on the inside, all she felt were great drops of shame, and more than a little bit of fear.

Rose sat up where she had been sprawled on the dry floor of an empty shower, dusty from disuse, shuffling over to get a better look at him today. It was like this every time she saw him now. She had to check, to let her eyes trace across his hard features to catalog what new marks he had acquired. It always saddened her, but she felt a certain sense of twisted responsibility for him. Scorpius Malfoy was tall and broad with muscles that looked like corded steel, yet there was something infantile about him that Rose could not ignore. She felt the urge to nurture, to save.

She exhaled a sigh from deep in her chest as her eyes carved pathways down his face, illuminating the new black eye and busted lip. It was the only rule in their communal sanctuary; no glamours allowed. It was all or nothing.

"Come here, Malfoy. Let me clean you up," Rose gestured forward, grabbing her first-aid kit from under the counter.

When she looked up, he was at the counter, leaning heavily over the sinks, his shoulders heaving. The sight of this strong, cruel boy-man losing his glittering granite façade was almost more than Rose could take. Without thinking, she placed a gentle hand on his bowed back, feeling the taut muscles under her palm.

Like a viper, as soon as she touched him, he struck. Snapping up like he'd been electrocuted, he whipped around, grabbing both of her arms and pushing her against the cold wall. In that instant, locked in his dark blue eyes, Rose could see the same emotions felt by every victim in the history of the universe. She saw the beaten slave girl, the man stabbed by his own brother, the abandoned child, and the witch burned at the stake. But most of all, in Scorpius Malfoy's eyes, wide with terrified anger, Rose Weasley saw herself.

As soon as he returned to the moment, Malfoy released her. He stared at his hands; they seemed so big and useless to him that he didn't know what to do with them, where to put them. He settled on rubbing them frantically through his hair, mussing it so thoroughly that it took on the appearance of a separate entity.

The small room was frozen. Time had congealed in the air, lilting around their bodies with a gelatinous fluidity. Rose had never felt so bare, so _unhidden_.

"Sorry," she mumbled, grazing the counter with her knuckles. She knew what it meant, that he had reacted to her soft touch with fear and violence, because it was probably how she would have reacted as well, if she wasn't her and he wasn't him. It made her sad. Her suffering at someone's hands was one thing – but him? The idea of it made her equal parts indignant and nauseous.

After she'd spoken, Malfoy looked up, meeting her eyes in the mirror. "There's nothing to be sorry about," He roughly turned on the rusty tap and splashed his face with water.

_This is it_.

Rose wasn't really sure where the thought came from, but as soon as it crossed her mind, she knew how right it was. She imagined Malfoy and her standing on opposite sides of a canyon, both dying of thirst on a desert flat with red sand and twenty-foot cactuses. Maybe they wouldn't live any longer or any better, but she figured that suffering together was better than dying alone.

So she jumped.

She approached him cautiously, her legs unsteady and her eyes wide. "Malfoy, can I ask you a question?"

"You just did," He wouldn't look at her.

"I mean another one. A personal one."

His eyes tightened. "You can ask me whatever you the want. It's a free country, isn't it?"

Rose couldn't help but frown, harsh lines pulling down the crêpe-like skin around her face. He was a frightened animal, and she was going to prod him.

"How did you get those bruises? Those scars? I'm sure each one has a story, and you know I won't tell anyone," She forced the words out as fast as she could without rendering the sentence unintelligible, her hands shaking.

He looked at her shrewdly, a hint of amusement turning up the corners of his lips.

"And how do I know you won't tell anybody, Weasley?" he asked, cocking his head to one side. He reminded her of a puppy.

"Look at me, Malfoy. I'm hardly in a position to be gossiping to anyone about anything. I'm far more pathetic than you are, anyhow," Rose admitted, fiddling with a loose edge on her sweater. As if realizing what she'd just said, her head snapped up. "Not that you're pathetic, of course," she clarified, her eyes as wide as dinner plates.

He smiled just a fraction of an inch, and Rose caught a glimpse of teeth, shiny beneath his lips. "I suppose you're right. And don't look so appalled with yourself. You're right, I am pathetic," With this, he sobered, lines creasing his forehead.

He straightened to his full height, and Rose was reminded of just how large Scorpius Malfoy was. It thrilled her and frightened her all at once. She had never imagined that someone so strong and broad could ever be hurt like he obviously had been.

Malfoy took his t-shirt off and threw it on the counter. Mechanically, Rose folded it, never tearing her eyes away from his marked skin. His torso was livid with scars young and old – pale white, shiny pink, and blood red, interspersed with purple and yellow bruising. Before she could stop herself, Rose found herself resting her hand on his back, feeling the sharp, raised lines. She felt his muscles tense under her hand, but other than that he was completely still.

"Do you know what cage fighting is, Weasley?" he asked, a peculiar, strained note in his voice.

"I – I think so… Like muggle cage fighting? I've never seen anything like that in our world," she responded, almost mechanically. She was entranced by his body; beautiful and brutalized.

"That's because there isn't anything like it in our world. I fight in muggle rings, against muggles."

Rose just stared at him, disbelief etched on to her features.

He looked at her in the mirror, narrowing his eyes and slightly pursing his lips. "I know what you're thinking. Why would a pureblood be spending time in muggle fight establishments, lowering myself to their level?" He continued before she could cut in, anticipating the impending pro-muggle diatribe. "I know what it feels like, Weasley. To beat a man so badly that you can't even recognize him. What I do may not be right, but at least I do it with my own two hands, not with a piece of wood and a few fancy words," he said, almost grudgingly.

"Even a coward can kill with a wand and a spell – most people don't realize what it really means to end a man's life until they've done it with their own hands," He looked up then, straight as an arrow, and she could imagine what the men he fought must have felt. Something equal parts anticipation and despair, seasoned with fear. "Whenever I am responsible for marks on somebody's skin, it is because I meant it, and I know exactly what I'm doing to them," He stood stock still, frozen in memory.

"You know, Malfoy, that's almost honourable, in a twisted way. But I still don't understand these other, older scars. They can't all be from fighting, can they?" She looked at him then, just in time to note how his skin paled and diamonds formed in his dark eyes.

He sighed before speaking. "I've told you my second-biggest secret, Weasley, and you haven't told me any of yours. Save it for another night," he said tiredly, grabbing his shirt and pulling it over his head, effectively boxing away everything (these beautiful, monstrous everythings) that he had brought to life.

But still, they lingered, and Rose could feel the difference in the air, permeating and altering everything she had ever assumed about Scorpius Malfoy.

**~ () ~**

The letter from her parents arrived two days after Christmas, and it broke her heart.

_We're so very worried about you, Rose._

It was filled to the brim with platitudes and finely concealed probes – she could feel their fear radiating through the finely curled script of her mother's hand. And like most children, her parent's fear was like an electric shock to her, like blunt force trauma to the head. She realized as she stared at the letters, that she could not deal with this. Any of it.

She steeled herself, forcing her pale, trembling hands to reach for parchment and quil, trying to force the words in her mind into fruition.

_I have something important to tell you. For the last five years I have been -_

The words will not come. She scrawls the same sentence out again and again, trying in vain to finish it, only to feel something akin to a block appear spontaneously in her mind, a cancer that overrides her thoughts and stays her hand. Panic bubbles within her as she realizes just how out of control she has become. Her head swims, and she grabs the quil again, trying to force something, anything out that reflects her pain.

_HE IS HUR - _

She cannot write anymore.

_HELP ME I CANNOT -_

The words are stuck, hopelessly imprisoned in her tortured mind by magic of the darkest kind. She tries to scream, to yell to the world what she has been forced to suffer, but no sound is produced. She is trapped, beholden to one entity, bound and gagged in the hell of her reality.

And then it comes. It comes fiercely and without warning and Rose cannot even cry because it is too expected now, too ordinary. It is frightening how commonplace her destruction has become.

_Rose. Rose. Rose. Rose. Come to me. _

And she goes. She goes because she has no other choice.

The letter from her parents flutters to the floor, their words and wishes and fears clattering to the ground at her feet.

**~ () ~**

When he is finished with her, she remembers her small moment of defiance and shivers because that girl _could not _have been her. She is hackneyed and pale and waif-like in her resistance. Her blood is too blue, her veins cool and exposed in the half-light of the bathroom.

When she entered, Scorpius Malfoy was not there. It wasn't until later that she would realize with a detached sort of incredulity that that was the first thing she noticed as she stared in the mirror. Not that she felt and looked as if her whole face was broken, but the fact that the harsh, cold man-boy with glowing blue eyes was not present to make her quake in her mary-janes.

Rose didn't even realize she was waiting for him until she fell asleep lying on the floor in one of the showers, her hair long and red spilling around her like a pool of blood.

Scorpius didn't arrive until 3 AM, and when he did, he was greeted by silence. He looked around, noticing somewhere in the corners of his mind that he was actually slightly disappointed not to see the slight girl with the violent hair standing hunched over the counter. He didn't notice her presence until over ten minutes had passed as she was almost invisible, curled up on the tiles with her cheek pressed into the floor.

He strode over with the intention to wake her, crouching down with his hand outstretched, until he noticed the full extent of her injuries. Although he hadn't directly questioned her about her injuries, each time he saw her in the bathroom when he came in gave life to a violent, vengeful fire that unlocked his muscles and urged his face to twist into hideous contortions that he knew would only scare her. It wasn't until after many of these incidences that he understood the emotions he was feeling, and why.

He wanted to protect this girl. He wanted to protect her because of the one he hadn't been able to protect.

So for this reason, as Scorpius crouched down beside her, he brushed his fingers over the viciously hued marks on her skin, feeling his body shake with the anger he had suppressed for so long. On that December 27th, Scorpius Malfoy vowed that he would save this girl. He would save her because no one else seemed to be willing to do so, and he was living proof that everyone needed a hero.

**~ () ~**

Rose woke up with a crick in her neck. She was still in the same uncomfortable position on the bathroom floor, although there was one very large and obvious change in scenery. A very big body was sitting in the shower with her, his back pressed against the opposite wall. She could feel the intensity in his hooded eyes, could see the barely leashed power in the hard lines of his face.

She sat up quickly, almost knocking her head on the wall as she scrambled backwards, fear clouding her thoughts.

"Hey, relax it's just me," Came the deep, placating voice.

Rose gulped, forcing her rabbit-like heart to beat more slowly. "I – I know, you just… scared me is all," Her voice came out weak, infantile almost.

Scorpius glanced at his watch, and Rose dropped her eyes, suddenly becoming very interested in her thin Gryffindor sweater.

"You've been sleeping for five hours," he stated, almost boredly.

"And you've been here this whole time?"

He just looked at her, something sardonic in his quicksilver eyes as he pursed his lips, seemingly in thought.

"Yes, yes I suppose I have been," he said, seeming almost troubled by the thought. "You talk in your sleep, did you know?"

Rose flushed and looked down, blinking rapidly to dispel her discomfort. Scorpius stood up then, and Rose quickly followed suit. She moved to the main sink area, the harsh daylight making the severe bruising to face and neck appear even more livid. It always looked worse the day after. She could feel his eyes on her.

"You know, Weasley, while you were sleeping, I decided something," He began, taking a step closer to her.

Rose looked at him nervously, wringing her hands. "What exactly did you decide?"

"Right here, right now, you are going to tell me why you look like you've been attacked by a bloody mountain troll every time I see you. I haven't asked you before, because quite frankly, I'm a selfish bastard and like everything else in my life I thought it would just go away. That you would just go away. But you haven't, and here you are, staring me in the face. So tell me, how can I in good conscience turn away?"

He turns to face the mirror, hands shoved into his pockets. Rose looks at him, and her eyes are so wide that she looks like a child, young and thin and wretched. And suddenly, Scorpius is so, so angry. Abruptly, he slams his fist down on the granite counter, feeling it shudder.

"Tell me, Weasley, tell me so that I can help you. Please, let me help you," The words come out as a violent whisper, his eyes glowing like frigid coals.

Rose's heart flutters in her chest, and in that moment, she truly hates herself. She wants nothing more than to open her mouth, to scream the truth, that she might be saved because of it. This is her dream, her wish, and there is nothing she can do to guarantee its fruition. She is powerless.

"I wish that I could -," The words garble behind her tongue, her true intentions floating from between her lips in gusts of breath that meant nothing and never would.

"There is this -," MAN AND HE IS HURTING ME.

"No one knows that -," I AM RUINED.

"Please, please, Malfoy, please -," HELP ME.

Her words are nothing, and she sees the corners of his eyes tighten, the frustration in his drawn, beleaguered features. She wants to take it all away, to set him free. But she can't, and if anything has ever hurt her in her entire pathetic life, it is this boy and the look on his face that tells her that right at this moment, his humanity is curdling in his bones, and it is all because of her.

"You are haunting me. You are haunting me, Rose Weasley, and I know that you will never stop," The words are whispers, tiny gusts of air that seem as if they belong to no one. Delicate and fierce, they hover in the air, oblivious to their weight.

The Malfoy boy stares at her reflection in the mirror, and his eyes are like diamonds – hard, shining, impossibly complex, and above all, indescribably beautiful. She cannot look at him anymore. So she turns, her bruises sharp and complicated, like hieroglyphs carved into her skin, leaving behind the only sanctuary she has ever known.

**~ () ~**

Astoria Mafoy née Greengrass was not a hard woman, and it showed in the letters she had written her son each and every week that he was at Hogwarts, before her passing, of course.

Scorpius had always been shocked at how much wit and repartee, how much intelligence lay between the carefully detached blue eyes of his ice queen of a mother. It was why he had reread each of her letters at least a hundred times. There was something simple about her, something indelible that he didn't fully appreciate until it was far too late.

_You really shouldn't antagonize your father, dear. You know how he gets. _

Scorpius feels his hands shake, the mad anger he feels every time he reads her last letter rises within him like a tide of decay.

_He becomes worse and worse every single day. I know you worry, dear, you have such a tender heart. But you really shouldn't, you know that he means nothing by it._

The words are barely legible at this point. The salty, fat tears of a child blur the small, feminine handwriting of the only love he has ever known, and he regrets more and more each time he reads them that he hadn't been a child. That he had been the man he was today. Tall and strong, littered with scars from his misguided attempts to be the man his father wanted and the man his mother deserved.

But she was gone, they both were, really, even though Draco Malfoy still sat behind his great oak desk, his cheeks sunken and his eyes vacant, wondering what life would have been like had he not been the man he inevitably became. And Scorpius was too late. Too late to save her from his father, and too late to save him from himself.

So, looking at Rose Weasley's reflection in that mirror that day in December, he vowed that this time, he would not be too late. Because if he was, it would surely destroy him.

**~ () ~**

The next time Rose Weasley finds herself in that prefect's bathroom, it is a break in her pattern, and for that she is more than a little proud. The only injuries she has are from days past, and she realizes as she steps into the small, circular room that this is the first time she has come here for any reason other than refuge of the simplest kind.

She is here to see the Malfoy boy, even if she won't admit it to herself, and that is more frightening than she cares to imagine. When he does arrive, it is her turn to worry.

There is a large laceration on the right side of his face, and his eyes swollen and red. They do not speak. She mechanically sets out the first aid kit and goes to work on his face, noticing almost absentmindedly that treating his wounds hurts her immeasurably more than treating her own, because in some twisted way, she feels responsible for him. She realizes as she blots away the blood on his face, that maybe, just maybe, she wants to save him.

"You really shouldn't do this, you know. I can't imagine that being beaten to a pulp is fun for you," She breaks the heavy silence, ignoring the pang she feels as he winces under her ministering hand.

"I don't do it for fun, Weasley. It's for personal betterment, although _I_ can't imagine that you would understand in the least," he huffs.

She can sense the irritation behind his words, but she doesn't take them to heart. She knows him now, understands his patterns and his moods.

She pauses for a second, her hand hovering above his face, peroxide-soaked cotton ball in hand. "It scares me, you know, seeing you like this. I'm afraid that one of these days you won't come back," Rose whispers, surprising herself by her boldness.

He stands up suddenly, ignoring the way she wrenches herself away from the sudden motion, fear painted across her features. He wishes she wasn't afraid of him. He wishes it more than words can express.

"How can you say that to me, when you waltz in here day after day, bruised in the most horrifying ways, yet refusing to tell me anything about how it happened?!" She can hear the anger in his voice, and it turns her stomach in knots.

"Please, Malfoy, please just, don't do this -,"

He whirls around suddenly, and she is crouched on the floor at his feet, tiny, quaking arms covering her head. And in that moment, he is every nightmare he has ever had, a large, ungainly beast with too-huge hands and too much everything to be in the presence of this small, feral thing.

He rubs his hands over his face, relishing in the twinges of pain that results.

"What are you doing, Weasley?" His words are miniscule but sharp, so much so that she lifts her head to look at him from her crouched position, coffee-coloured eyes blazing with equal parts fear and equal parts an unquenchable desire to be seen.

With a suddenness that shocks them both, he crouches down beside her, trying to fold himself into something smaller, more feasible, less intimidating. She stares at him, pure alarm written all over her features.

"Wh – what are _you_ doing, Malfoy," Her voice is tiny and afraid, and it makes him want to vomit.

"Don't call me that. Please. It's Scorpius,"

She ducks her head, and he can see her gulp. "Oh – okay. Scorpius, then. What are you doing?"

He takes a deep breath. "I'm showing you that I'm not my father, I'm not your family or your 'friends', and most of all, I am not _him_,"

He's not even sure how it happens. One moment they are two separate entities, beings on opposite sides of life, until he utters the words that makes all of that dissipate. And suddenly, she is just a frightened, abused little girl, and he is the only person in her life that cares enough to notice. So when she cries, he holds her, and neither of them moves, hoping against hope that this careful, tender spell is one that will never be broken, and knowing deep in their hearts that it inevitably will be.

**~ () ~**

The clock strikes nine, and Rose is dreaming of corn fields and a little farm with children and a strong husband who loves her. Her eyelids flutter and she opens her eyes with the realization she is being held by Scorpius Malfoy, the coldest boy she knows, and the world is suddenly a shockingly beautiful place.

She feels the stirrings of a genuine smile when she starts to feel something else entirely. Something unwelcome.

_Rose. Rose. Rose. Rose._

"No, no, please no," Her mind is beaten, overdrawn, her breaths coming in gasps leaning perilously close to hyperventilation.

"What's wrong, Weasley? What is it? What's wrong with you?" His voice is groggy, as if he has just woken up from a deep dream.

Rose feels him move to get up, his long legs shifting beneath him, and something wild and primitive in its will to live possesses her. She grabs violent hold of his polo shirt, fisting the delicate material between her fingers, forcing herself closer to him than she has been to any man since _him_.

"Please don't let him take me, please, Malfoy, you have to help me, don't let him take me away!" She is blubbering now, incoherent, the force of the dark spell pulling her away inch by inch, though she still clings desperately to Scorpius Malfoy's shirt.

"Calm down, Weasley. Just let go of me and tell me what's going on. I can help you," His voice is rational, full of calmness that she does not have the luxury to feel.

"NO! You don't understand, you'll never understand, I can't, I can't…,"

_ROSE. ROSE. ROSE. ROSE._

The force of the spell becomes too much, and Rose feels invisible hands around her wrists, ripping her hands away from Scorpius Malfoy. She winces as she hears the sound of tearing fabric. Brief fear clouds her mind – will he be mad at the destruction of his no doubt expensive clothes? It is quickly replaced by sheer, unadultered panic. She has never fought this hard against him before. The consequence of this new strength is that the end result, should she lose, becomes that much more terrible. She _cannot_ lose. Not this time.

Quickly, before the spell can take hold of her even more, Rose throws her arms around Malfoy's waist, hoping to tether herself there, at the same time feeling her feet start to step in the opposite direction, moving almost of their own accord.

"What the bloody hell, Weasley, tell me what's going on -," Scorpius is becoming just as panicked as she, his voice rising in volume, she hears it ring out above the din in her head.

"He's calling me, Malfoy, he's calling me and I cannot resist! I cannot!" She feels her legs being pulled out from under her, urging her in the direction of the door.

"Who is, Weasley? What can't you resist?" He is still hopelessly confused, but even so, he grasps her forearms tightly, seeming to understand in some irrational part of his brain that her will is intrinsically and irrevocably divided.

"The one who – who does this to me. Please don't let me go! Please!" She is begging now, tears mixing with sweat on her cheeks, her hair wildly splayed and her finger nails breaking under the force with which she grips him.

Scorpius is at a loss. He doesn't know what's going on, but there are certain things he can see, things he can understand because they are small and desperate, and they are written all over her face, in her eyes. So he wraps his arms around her waist, and he anchors them in place. He doesn't know why she's crying so hard, or why she is gripping him with one hand and pushing him away with the other. All he knows is that she is asking him not to let go of her with a desperation more violent than he has seen in his entire life.

So he tethers them there, crushing her against him so tightly that he is sure she'll feel it tomorrow. But he doesn't care, because in these spare, precious moments, he vows that he will not let go of the broken girl with vibrant hair and dark eyes. Not though her feet seem to be scrambling away, not though she is a Weasley and he is a Malfoy, but because she is asking him not to let go.

Scorpius Malfoy holds on, even when it seems like his arms are about to ripped from their sockets, because he let go once before. And he will never make that mistake again.

_ROSEROSEROSEROSEROSEROSEROSE RO—_

He holds.

**END PART II**


	3. PART III

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series. All rights belong to J.K. Rowling.**

******Warnings: This work of fiction contains references to the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of a minor by an adult and spousal violence, in addition to the participation of a minor in an illegal cage fighting ring.**

**These Steel Cables (III)**

When it is over, Rose feels as if they have weathered a hurricane. Her eyes are red and weeping, her skin rough and her hair wild, but she is still. He is still. They are both so blessedly still. She hasn't any idea how long they have been here for, in their little sanctuary, though it seems like hours, days, years.

She never thought it would stop, that she would feel an end to that terrible voice, that her limbs would be free of the Professor's manipulation. By the end, when the voice came in never-ending waves that threatened to drown her under their volume, she wasn't holding onto the Malfoy boy at all. In fact, by the end, Rose Weasley had utterly and completely given up. In her mind, the war had been battled and lost. By the time the voice began to fade, she had actually been fighting _against_ the arms that were her lifeline, so crazed by the power of the curse. She had pushed him away with both hands, violently attempting to race towards her death. But he didn't let go. Even when she was sure he would, the cold boy with eyes of earth-shaping blue didn't, _wouldn't_ let go. When she bit him, hit him, kicked him, he held her ever tighter, his face set like granite, his eyes hard and his hands harder.

When it was over, they stared at each other. They both looked so old, so beaten that she could almost imagine that it wasn't just her sitting sad and scared and utterly alone, ensconced within her pain. She could imagine that he had been with her from the beginning, that the hurt was his too, and that she didn't have to carry it all on her own.

As she turns to him, it is his turn to be haunted, and hers to take violent hold, and not to let go. Enveloping his large frame as best she can, she turns her face into his neck, inhaling the scent of him, this beautiful boy who has grown to be nothing less than an extension of herself, and whispers in his ear in a voice like finest filigree.

"Thank you,"

Their eyes touch, dove blue and homespun brown, and there are no secrets anymore, no harsh unrealities or hidden fears.

"Tell me. Tell me what's happened to you," He is a whisper, no more than a spirit in her head, and she is completely unafraid.

So she does.

**~ () ~**

When people hear the story of Scorpius Malfoy and Rose Weasley and how they ultimately saved each other, they expect certain things. Flowers, romance. Perhaps a large June wedding with lightning bugs and aged oak wine. It would have been perfect; the uniting of these two ancient houses that had been pitted against each other since the dawn of time.

And they do try for a time, if only to become that which everyone expects them to be. After the story comes out, and two other female students come forward with stories of their own, there is a lull. There is a place in time where people watch them, where they expect either failure or success, instead of that curious place inbetween that people inevitably reach when they are simply surviving.

People expect a happy ending. What they get is something entirely and infinitely more real.

**~ () ~**

"I'm going home tomorrow. My family thinks that it will be good for me to get out of this place, at least for a bit," Rose's tremulous-yet-stronger-than-it-has-ever-been voice slices through the silence in the bathroom, cutting it clean in half.

Rose stands in the doorway, her feet shuffling nervously as she fights the urge to run. There's too much everything in this place. To much him, too much her, too much of their pain and their happiness and their _relief_ for her to stand on these sullied tiles without feeling like her heart is going to explode right out of her chest.

He is leaning against the old countertop, his shoulders hunched under the weight of something she will never be able to understand, and she almost cannot bear to look at him.

"That's probably best," He nods slowly, his back still to her.

She waits. She waits for him to turn around, to say something witty and profound and utterly moving that fuses them together and replaces the thread connecting them with a steel cable.

But he doesn't. The air is too thick and she is so much more beautiful than he can ever remember her being, so he stays put, staring at her still reflection in the mirror, praying for courage that he knows neither of them will ever have. She nods slightly, and he remembers what it felt like to crush her to his chest, what it felt like to save her because he had no other choice. Because he has a choice now, and Scorpius Malfoy will always take the easiest choice, and right now the easiest choice is not the right one.

So he watches as she walks away, and he knows deep in whatever chasm he has for a heart, that he will remember and regret this day for as long as he lives.

They do not meet again.

**~ () ~**

Rose heals. She starts out with small things, like cupcakes and hot chocolate, and moves forward until she almost doesn't flinch when her brother pats her on the shoulder or when a man laughs too loud. She comes to a place where she doesn't cry nearly as much, where she can bear to be hugged and where she doesn't feel like she deserved everything that happened to her during those five long years.

And still, through it all, she thinks of him. It's hard for her to describe it, how he lives in her memory. She remembers the way he smelled, that night when everything was split wide open, as she pressed her face into the crook of his neck and felt his paper-thin skin on her cheek. She remembers the vulnerability that would sometimes appear in his diamond-hard eyes, and how at odds this singular openness would look against the rest of his imposing figure. She remembers the way he held her, the way his arms gripped her so hard it hurt, even when she was clawing at him and hurting him, maddened as she was by the curse. How he held on anyway. She remembers Scorpius Malfoy, and she cries.

After that half-conversation in the bathroom, she did not return to Hogwarts. She floated through her last few courses by correspondence, her heartbroken mother nigh on completing the assignments for her, with her blustering father hovering around her to such an excruciating degree that it made her teeth ache and her stomach do somersaults, because this was _her_ _father_. When had she become so afraid of everything?

It was at this point in her life that Rose realized that her parents would do anything for her, anything at all. So for almost a year, she sat in near silence, everybody afraid to prod the Rose for fear that she would break. She wanted to scream at them – couldn't they see that she was already broken?

After she got up and actually started living, Rose Weasley became a cursebreaker, dealing only in magic of the darkest kind. She liked her job – the way it forced her to face things that she had lived in fear of, how it filled her with desperation and made her thrive in the darkness. She loved it because she needed it. She had become like some sort of rare animal, or a bacterium perhaps. On normal days, in normal conditions, she was as good as dead, her smiles coming too easily, her eyes pale and flat. There were only two environments that broke through her gilded shell, that unearthed the Rose Weasley everyone else had forgotten existed. One was during jobs, when she was desperate and pleading and suspended in time. And the other?

The other lived in those careful, painful moments when she allowed herself to think of Scorpius Malfoy.

**~ () ~**

Scorpius Malfoy does not live up to his father's expectations, and for that he is immeasurably glad. After Rose Weasley leaves school, he stops fighting. He tells his trainer that he is done, that he has had enough violence to last any man a lifetime, and he sets out to be something that he doesn't have to look in the mirror and hate with a burning passion.

He thinks of his mother often. Too often, some might say. He sees her in the awkward crinkle of the dusty drapes that his father refuses to let the house elves clean properly, and he sees her in the chips on the corners of their best set of china. He doesn't realize until much later that this isn't exactly his mother that he is seeing, but rather her inexplicable and painful absence. The thought makes him choke on his tea.

He becomes a professor. People who knew him as a boy are shocked, maybe even a little horrified, but Scorpius has never once regretted his career choice. The minds that he sees on a daily basis are so different from his own and yet so similar, so tangible that he fears to touch them is to break them. Yet he becomes more and more baffled as, day by day, he holds them and cradles them and his destruction is not wreaked, for it is held within, and he realizes that he couldn't unleash it if he tried.

His father is not pleased and not displeased when he learns of his son's occupation. Scorpius is not at all surprised by his reaction. He realized from a young age that Draco Malfoy was a deeply preoccupied man, and he knows that his father will always be haunted by the day he cracked open his wife's head on a coffee table, and that he regrets it, at least to a certain extent. Scorpius understands this, so he quashes the urge to kill his father each time he sees him, because he knows that living is torture enough for Draco Malfoy.

In summary, Scorpius Malfoy's life is an amalgamation of regrets, and time spent ignoring that which he cannot deal with for fear of completely breaking. He tries not to think of Hogwarts, because it makes him remember times when he was strong and fearless and young and held the world in the palm of his hand. He tries not to remember the softness of a woman, the giving and the taking that he had felt but so briefly before he turned to stone.

But above all, he tries not to remember Rose Weasley, and how for those months the only thing he could think of was her, and the only way he could function was when he knew she was at least safe enough to blink at him owlishly with those deep, hidden eyes that he had never seen and never would see on anybody else in his whole life.

So he forgets her. Scorpius Malfoy lives the rest of his life with unicorn blood sticking stubbornly and futilely to the walls of his heart, spending every waking moment trying to forget the beautiful, broken, brown-eyed Weasley girl and trying to remember what it felt like to live fearlessly and ambiguously and to love with the fire of a million exploding stars.

**~ () ~**

Neither of them marry. Rose has boyfriends, crushes, friends who she knows want to be more, but never lovers. Never lovers, because she knows that that part of her is broken and will never be fixed, at least not on her own with starlight dusting her cheekbones and cold hands pressing into her stomach as icewater makes a steady trail down her gaunt cheeks.

Scorpius stays as far away from women in general as he can. He knows that his father isn't happy that he won't be provided with an heir, that the Malfoy name will not live on in his son. Scorpius isn't exactly sure why he doesn't simply find a stupid, blithering pureblood girl to procreate with, heaven knows it would be easy enough with all of the Malfoy gold. But he doesn't, because each time the thought crosses his mind, he has an image of a young girl with his mother's sharp but vacant eyes lying on a puce carpet with her head bashed in and Scorpius' large, ungainly handprints on her neck. He knows that he is too broken, too like his father to be a delicate lover or a gentle husband – there is too much Draco Malfoy in him for that.

One part of him yearns to show the softness that he knows is hidden inside him, but he never does. It is this brilliant, virile cowardice that he has always possessed, the one that convinces him to hide under his cage fighting scars and marks of his father's love and the memory of his mother and the sad little girl with red hair. He suffocates under all of it, and Scorpius Malfoy dies behind the blood and the smoke and the mirrors, becoming someone that he never thought he would be in a place he never thought he would end up. He becomes old and crinkled and Draco Malfoy. The only consolation he has is that he didn't have to destroy a young, beautiful girl who loved him with all of her small, bird-like heart to get there.

Scorpius Malfoy lives a long life, and there are times when he is happy, watching his students grow and learn and truly live the life that he never had. On an unremarkable day in autumn, Scorpius Malfoy dies at the age of eighty-seven. He dies sitting behind his father's old oaken desk with a glass of firewhiskey in his hand, his eyes filmy and unfocused, thinking back to a day when he was young and strong and he saved the life and sanity of a girl with the most painful smile he had ever seen. A girl who somehow managed to be beautiful, despite it all.

**~ () ~**

The Prophet crinkles, and the sound rings in her ears. Rose is skimming through the articles, not really reading them, until her eyes stop on a picture. It is obviously an old picture, with that subtle fadedness that only comes with too much passed time. It is of a tall, handsome boy with x-ray eyes and skin that shines in the darkness like ultraviolent light.

_OBITUARY_

_Scorpius Malfoy, 87._

She reads the obituary, full of platitudes and finely veiled incisions and she realizes with despair that nobody knew Scorpius Malfoy at all. They didn't know that he had loved his mother more than anything in the world, and that he saw her face in every woman he dared to admire. They didn't know that he hated violence and the taste of alcohol made him want to wretch, but that he partook in both only because he felt like that was what men did. They didn't know that he was kind and sensitive beneath all of the ice, and that when he smiled, truly smiled, he melted into this tremulous, beautiful chrysalis that seemed to all the world to contain the most precious of secrets. But most of all, they didn't know that when he was seventeen years old, he held and cradled a scared, broken girl with bruises on her skin and open wounds in her heart. He didn't do it because he had to, but because he could feel her pain more acutely than anybody in the world, and he had made the decision not to leave her behind. And she had loved him, that little girl, she had loved him with all of her heart, even though it hadn't done either of them any good in the end.

_I have loved you too fondly. I have stared at your brightness for too long. _

Scorpius Malfoy dies alone, and for the first time in forty years, Rose Weasley realizes that she truly hates herself.

_She let go. _

That night on the bathroom floor, when her world ended and began simultaneously, he hadn't screamed and cried and begged for her to hold on to him, not like she had to him. But as she looks back, she can see it in her memories of his straight eyes and his cupid's-bow lips. She can see it in his fear and his tentative hope and his sad, sad destruction, that he needed her to hold him down and keep him safe just as much as she had needed him to protect her from the demons that had stalked her so tirelessly.

But she let go. That last day in the prefect's bathroom, she walked away.

_She let go. _

So, with a heart like an origami bird, fluttering and puffing with the delicacy that only the inanimate can possess, Rose Weasley puts down the newspaper, smoothing out all of the wrinkles and curves in the fragile folds. And then, for the first time in what feels like a long time, she cries real, aching tears.

With her wrinkled hands pressed to her mouth, Rose Weasley cries for a lost boy and a lost girl and how they became lost together, but in different ways and at different times. Apart, they were _(are)_ nothing but long and floating, ever-reaching and always denying.

She cries for them and their loss because she knows, in the depths of her guarded, grieving heart, that together, they would have been terrifying.

**FIN**

**A/N This ending is where the characters originally led me, but an Alternate Ending (HEA) has been posted. Everyone can use a little redemption.**


	4. PART IV (Alternate Ending HEA)

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series. All rights belong to J.K. Rowling.**

**Warnings: This work of fiction contains references to the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of a minor by an adult and spousal violence, in addition to the participation of a minor in an illegal cage fighting ring.**

**A/N Alternate ending, as promised. This is not a 'full life' conclusion like Part III, but rather more like two related snapshots in time. It commences in the same place as Part III.**

**These Steel Cables (IV)**

"Wait," The voice is reluctant, winsome, perhaps even a little afraid, but she grasps onto it like the lifeline that it is.

Rose turns on her heel, looking back into that hole of a bathroom, her eyes wide, breathless, waiting. The boy straightens to his full height, turning to face her, and Rose feels her rabbit-heart flutter.

His mouth is set in a hard line, his eyes red-rimmed and tired.

"Will you be, you know, alright after all of this? I know that I should just let you walk away and live your life, but I feel that, I don't know -,"

Rose cuts him off. "Like we're connected, somehow? Is that what you feel?"

His head snaps up and she is skewered by his eyes, burning like frigid coals set deeply into the hard planes of his face. She doesn't blink. She's worried that if she closes her eyes for one second, he will be gone, that this sudden, unexpected vulnerability will be replaced by the hard coldness that she has come to expect from this haunting boy who is almost as damaged as she is.

"Yes," he whispers hoarsely.

She feels tears spring to her eyes, but they are different tears than usual, _special _tears. She loves these tears. She wishes she could cradle them and keep them in a bottle and then cry them again and again, anything to hold on to this feeling that is buoying her up as if some long dead part of her has been freed beyond measure.

His hands twitch, just a little twinge, but what she reads in that simple movement is the most powerful thing she has ever seen. And suddenly, she understands Scorpius Malfoy. She understands that he is sad and afraid and alone, just like she had been when he stepped into her life and became the unwitting hero that she knows she will dream about until she is old and wrinkled. And she understands, in that moment, that he is frozen, locked in a place where he is unlovable and unloved and powerless to escape.

It is without thought, without hesitation, that Rose approaches him, and it is with confidence that she wraps his large body in her arms, trying to fold him into her, to make him feel her warmth and her burning, burning desire to be of him, and to have him be of her.

He is stiff at first, but when he realizes that she isn't going to let go, he lets his shoulders drop, hunching himself into her as best he can. And as he looks at them in the mirror, him leaning down and her reaching up to end up in an embrace that can only be described as _revolutionary_, Scorpius Malfoy marvels at the small girl whose fragile arms are protecting him from the world.

And for a split second, he sees his mother.

**~ () ~**

They are lying beside each other, just like every other night since they moved into the manor, and Scorpius can feel the tiny breaths of the woman he knows he would die for puff into the air that he himself breathes and Rose can rest peacefully in the knowledge that she has found a man who will never hurt her.

They have a ritual, around bedtime, and to anybody else it would seem absolutely neurotic. But like a lot of things, to them, it makes sense. They never touch, as they go to sleep. They lie on separate sides of the bed as they drift off, knowing that in the morning they will wake up in each other's arms. It's their own little magic trick, their miracle.

Tonight, Rose decides that in some twisted way, the time for boldness is not completely lost. Reaching over under the thick feather duvet, she finds Scorpius' cold fingers and grasps them tightly in hers.

"Scorp?"

"Yeah," His voice is deep and sleepy, but it still manages to send shivers down her spine.

"You know I love you, right?" she whispers, almost nervously.

She can feel his smile, imagine the look on his face. "Yeah. I know,"

"... I talked to your Mom today,"

It's minute, but she can feel him stiffen. She knows how much he misses his mother, even after all of these years.

"You know, that portrait that your father keeps in the back of the library,"

"Yeah, I know the one," his voice is quiet, brooding, boiling with something neither of them wants to face.

"Anyway, we were talking, and it dawned on me that she was scared for you. She was scared that you were going to end up like… like your father," Rose chokes the words out.

It shocks her to think about, because before she began having these weekly conversations with the late Astoria Malfoy, the thought that Scorpius could be anything like Draco Malfoy had not crossed her mind for even a second. It was sobering, but the thought didn't frighten her. It couldn't, not when she was lying beside a man who was and always would be perfect in his flaws and utterly unchangeable in her eyes.

"And am I? Am I like _him_?" The sheer amount of pain that Rose can hear in Scorpius' voice astounds her, and she hates herself for bringing it up at all.

"That's just what I wanted to tell you, Scorp. I've noticed that you… that you always seem afraid. You've been afraid since the beginning, and I only just realized recently that maybe it was yourself you were afraid of," The words come out before she can stop herself, and she hates herself for her honesty.

_He is too fragile for this. I need to protect _him_, above all else._

She hears his heavy swallow, and even in the darkness, she can make out his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. Suddenly, she is filled with such tenderness, such pure, unadulterated love that she feels as if she might choke on it.

She rolls towards him, resting her head on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat.

"You saved me, Scorp. You saved me from something darker than you could ever even imagine in yourself. You are nothing like your father, Scorpius Malfoy, and don't you forget it," The steel in her voice shines through, and Rose feels her eyes fill with those same tears that she cried all those years ago, standing just on the cusp of something more beautiful than she thought she could ever deserve.

He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't have to. His hand comes up to rest on her cheek, and this action conveys all of his thanks and more. She falls to sleep listening to the steady rhythm of his heart.

Scorpius stays awake. He sometimes thinks that his mind is like another world, a place that he can retreat into and become completely preoccupied with. But on this night, all he can see is her.

He remembers what it felt like to hold her and to love her and to _save _her, and he knows that nothing in this world will ever be so powerful as that. Because when he is with her, he is never just Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy. He is a hero, a white knight, a brave-hearted fool who would go to hell and back just to see her smile one last time.

It's on this night, with these effusive, seductive thoughts running through his head, that Scorpius Malfoy realizes, really realizes for the first time, that he is nothing like his father. His father destroyed the only thing that ever really mattered to him, and Scorpius knows that his father lies awake at night wondering where it all went wrong, wishing that he was somehow different, better, _new_. But in this moment, looking down at the splash of red hair splayed across his chest, he knows that he has the amalgamation of his entire life, what was and is to come, wrapped up in his arms.

He saved her. They both know this, and he takes great pleasure in Rose feeling like she can lean on him, that he can protect her from anything. Lying there, smelling her singular scent and relishing in her soft weight, he ruminates on something that he's quite sure Rose has never realized, something that he knows he will keep in his heart for as long as he lives.

Little did she know, on that last day in that accursed prefect's bathroom, Rose Weasley had definitively separated the man from the monster. She had held onto him with hands of steel, cabling them together until they were no longer two separate entities, but one. On that day, Rose Weasley saved him from himself, and for that, he would be forever in her debt.

**FIN**

**A/N Thank you for your continued support throughout this work. Your input is greatly valued and appreciated.**


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